"DonovanRed" on PokerStars didn't return stake after deal is cancelled.

As title suggests, DonovanRed on PokerStars refused to return money after deal is cancelled by the staker : Team Frankenstein.

- The player didn't contact us full 4 days at all, after that he showed up and said that he was on a hooliday with his girlfriend and that he didn't play at all.

- The player failed to send reports as agreed several times.

- When we compare his reports and cashier screenshots they don't match. 60$ or 6 bi's for him; he has played NL10 under our stake, are missing. He claims that his HM2 didn't work exactly during few downswings.

Because of all these reasons, we decided to end the agreement with him as we stated in contract that we can end from our side any relationship with our horses if we are dissatisfied for any reason.

Meanwhile, Alex lost almost all of his bankroll, and he ended up with $36 plus rakeback (about $50) so in total ~$86.

We contacted the player that we are ending our deal, and asked him to return 86$ (even though he theoretically owns us $146 with $60 missing from reports), he refused because he believes that we should have paid him coaching session with weazel.

We don't obligate ourselves to pay coaching for our horses for any fixed amount in our contract, and our policy is well known among our players; coachings with weazel are paid proportionally often with work ethics, volume and success of our players. In the meanwhile we make some sweet sessions with them ourselves; as we did with Alex too. We said to him that we will pay him weazel when he will be back on pace with agreed volume, but in the meantime we had this another incident with him no showing up for several days.

Finally, we do not do this thread to make Alex pay us because we lost faith in his honesty, this is just a review thread for other stakers to be warned.

Kind regards,
Fran

Disclaimer: this is not opinion of PokerStrategy.com; it's my personal opinion

I don't want to get involved in this matter but this might be true "He claims that his HM2 didn't work exactly during few downswings." because it happened to me too: 74$ missing ( my account is in $, I played exclusively zoom so no conversions, no transfers/cashouts).

Thanks for sharing this, however, it's not that important bcs we trusted him on that and asked him to return just 86, not 146. I just mentioned it because I don't know anymore should I trust anything he says.

Thanks Fran for starting this thread. First of all I would like everyone to know that I haven't touched the remainder of the stake and will not. I play NL10SH zoom and am pretty much a break even player. I was pretty happy playing with my own roll and making small cash outs from time to time. When I started the agreement with Fran I made it clear that I was only taking the deal for the promised coaching. If Fran shares the skype conversations with the community you will all see that. I don't need staked or to steal a few dollars. I only wanted to improve my game and thought Fran's deal would be good for my game. Before the game started I said a few times that I would prefer if I could have a coaching as soon as possible, so that the team might get the best return for it's money. One week passed, two weeks, three weeks and still no coaching despite it being promised on a number of occasions. The other members of the team received coaching.

If Fran will share with everyone the emails exchanged and skype conversations between us people will see that his story is full of holes. Let me work through them...

"- The player didn't contact us full 4 days at all, after that he showed up and said that he was on a hooliday with his girlfriend and that he didn't play at all."

After I hit a downswing I notified the team and Fran said he would get back to me about how to proceed. Two days passed and despite asking them again I had heard nothing back from them. Was I just supposed to sit by the computer and wait until he could be bothered to respond to me and let me know what was going on. As I don't play on the weekends I went away for a few days with my girlfriend. When I returned I had a message on skype saying that they wanted to send me another $65 and have me rebuild my bankroll at NL5. I said that would be fine but then I got a response saying that the stake was cancelled.

"- The player failed to send reports as agreed several times."

The only time I didn't send a report was when the internet cut out. As I am living in a semi rural location in Tasmania this sadly happens from time to time. I always sent it as soon as I was able to. On a couple of occasions I even drove for half an hour to use other internet access.

"- When we compare his reports and cashier screenshots they don't match. 60$ or 6 bi's for him; he has played NL10 under our stake, are missing. He claims that his HM2 didn't work exactly during few downswings."

I think this is the most dishonest part of Frans post. From the very beginning I mentioned that my HM2 was even only $2 out from the figures in my report. I was told this was normal and that it was no big deal. Other than a few small differences in the figures my reports were correct for the first couple of weeks. I then did an update on HM2 and lost all my hands. I again notified the team. I had to email poker stars and start all over again. I am happy to share the emails with anyone that wants them. I imported all my hands again and after that my HM2 was still not working properly. When I was doing weekly reports it was now showing a large amount of money missing from previous weeks. Again all my reports checked out from day to day. No mention of it was made from the team. I continued to try and fix the HM2 problem and am still trying. If anyone want my hand histories they are welcome to them.

Fran is just using all these things as an excuse to stop the stake because he is too lazy to actually put any time and effort into it. I feel like I have wasted a lot of my time for nothing.

Now a few things for people to be aware of.
Why did Fran offer to send me more money if he was unhappy with my work?
Why is he just telling you that he removed me from the team when he told me that he has shut the entire team down?

Our contract states that:

"Moreover, the contract can be terminated earlier if both parties agree. Also, if the player does not work on his game and play expected and agreed by his contract, staker can terminate the contract earlier."

So which is it Fran? I didn't agree to terminate the contract earlier. If there was a problem with my work from the beginning then it is normal to tell the person about it but then why would you offer to send me more money??? Your story is full of holes. You are actually the untrustworthy one. Please share our emails and skype conversations as you said you would. Then people can start to see how unprofessional you actually are.

If anybody has any questions they want to ask me I am all for sharing all the information that I have. I have nothing to hide. I am more than happy to share all emails with the team, skype conversations and also emails I sent to pokerstars.

I actually thought Fran was a nice guy and that is the most upsetting thing about this for me. If you have an agreement with someone then you have to stick to it. You can't just do as you please and then decide to forget about it when you can't be bothered any more.

Disclaimer: this is not opinion of PokerStrategy.com; it's my personal opinion

I wanted to send you more money to play that's true, but you didn't reply on that email for 4 days, don't know what is exactly your point there. All in all, as I said I don't count on that money anymore, this thread is for other stakers to be cautious. I don't want to argue anymore with you; also I already told you what to do with the money

Also, saying that me and my team were lazy and not putting effort in our players is also very nice from you, maybe some other players from the team will come here and write the review because that's a total non sense. And for coaching with weazel, you know that you didn't receive it because you played only 12k hands at the time when you needed to have at least double that, and we said you to come back on pace so we can pay 50$ for the coaching with him, and that we can offer you some sweets and hand history reviews ourselves before that (and we did that session). So again, I don't know what is your point there.

As I thought you still chicken out of sharing the emails with people. At least now anyone reading this can see that you are dishonest. Please share the emails you sent me. You have avoided everything. At no point did I say the team was lazy. I said you were lazy. You didn't have what it takes to run a team. I had played over 60k hands and still no coaching. Don't lie anymore, you already look bad enough. Don't take it out on the players.

Alex there were no magic guaranteed in this stake aggreement. Results come buy working hard. By asking coaching after couple k* hands is dumb, waste of money and waste of time for you both.

I was under Frans stake as well. And i had weazels coaching (when i reached about 60k hand mark). But i felt like this was too small volume to go thorough with a coach (we added all my hands to analyze immediately +100k hands). I tried to work a lot on my game and team supported me, when i asked questions in depth to fran, he answered with quality (ofcourse not in 5min time mark) We even tried to do sweat sessions with other guy from team and this worked pretty well. When i almost reached +25 bi on nl5 i catched bad run which accumulated bad play in me for all month, but i had no complains from Fran and hes helpers* we tried to check out what was wrong instead of complaning.

Thing worth to mention: there were days when i was away from PC i just sent them simple message on mail, that i have not played a hand in that day. So tried to not dissappear and let them now whats going on.

Overall i think i gained a lot of experience and knowledge to improve my game.

I do not know what is unclear here... Staker has right to finish the staking at any time....and team is not asking you profit you made...you lost most of the roll and team is asking you to give the rest of the money left....this iis funny to me... how can someone keep teams money if staking is finished?
Even if Team was so bad you dont have a point...and I think everyone was fair to you...and better than fair..
This is just sad

we didn't discuss anything about weazel coaching before i start. we discussed only about game/hands review and sweat sessions. i was getting like 2 sessions of hand reviews and 1 sweat session each week which i think is pretty cool and ofc i gained a lot of experience and knowledge.

when i needed help etc there was a skype group where there was always someone experienced to help me.

i didnt talk with fran a lot. goldenbode, who was on the team, was helping me/reviewing my game and talking strategies a lot and that helped me a lot to improve.

the only thing that team was asking was a daily report via email and if i didnt play for like 1 day i should send an email mentioning that i didnt play a hand. and that's all.

in my opinion team was very professional to me. i don't have a single complaint